Exploring the effects of productive children: coding and robotics education program in early childhood education

Abstract

Recently, coding and robotics education has started to be integrated into early childhood education in Turkey. The current study aims to investigate the effects of Productive Children: Coding and Robotics Education Program (PCP) on children's cognitive development skills, language development and creativity. Eighty children, enrolled in four different public kindergarten classrooms, participated in the study. Four classrooms were randomly assigned to two experimental and two control groups. The PCP was implemented in the experimental group at least twice a week for nine weeks. This program consists of three parts: unplugged coding, robotic tools and block coding. Before and after this intervention, all children's cognitive, language and creative skills were measured. The results revealed that PCP, which is integrated into early childhood education activities, positively affects the cognitive development skills, language development and creativity of children. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences between the post-test scores of groups in favor of the experimental groups.